“Invited Talks” (Andrija Matić) / Andrea Selleri
Time: Feb 8, 2022, 18:15.
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***This is an online event. To obtain Zoom link and password, please contact to the department.
Knowledge and Understanding: Education in Aldous Huxley’s Short Stories
Although he worked as a teacher for only two years (1917-1919), Aldous Huxley wrote about education all his life. The lecture will analyze his major views on this topic, especially his opinion on universal or compulsory education, intellectual education, non-verbal education, active learning, and the distinction between knowledge and understanding. It will show that Huxley not only criticized the flaws of mainstream education but proposed solutions that followed other progressive educators at the time such as Maria Montessori and John Dewey, and inspired the next generation of educators such as Abraham Maslow. The lecture will also explain how most of those views were replicated in Huxley’s short stories—from “Happily Ever After” and other early works to “The Claxtons” and the stories published in his last book of short fiction.
Andrija Matić (1978) received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Belgrade, Serbia. He is the author of five novels, a collection of short stories, and the first Serbian study on T. S. Eliot’s complete works. He also published many articles on Anglo-American Modernism and contemporary fiction. He lives in Istanbul, where he teaches academic writing at Kadir Has University.